


And This Story Shall the Good Man Teach His Son

by major_general



Category: East of Eden - Steinbeck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/major_general/pseuds/major_general
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story Abra told to her children</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This Story Shall the Good Man Teach His Son

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/gifts).



This is the story Abra told to her children. She told it to them as a warning; she told it to them to keep them safe, to keep them content, to assure them of her love. She wanted to know that they would be happy and healthy, to know that anything was possible.

In the years after Adam's death, Lee found solace in talking to Sam Hamilton. It is the sort of thing a person will do, conjuring those who have passed on, those with whom one has an affinity and connection. It does not matter if the other person isn't really there; one always knows what the long lost person would say.

Lee would sit in his room in his Morris chair, or in the kitchen, and just talk to Samuel.

"Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our fathers?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Or perhaps, are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of others' fathers?"

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe there are no new choices that we can make. Maybe every choice has been made; every path has been followed."

"But would that mean that choice was not possible?"

"No, choice is still there, but no choice is new. Every choice a person makes is the same as someone else once made."

"But certainly there is some manner of change that is possible within this. Circumstances do change."

"But from our experiences, Cain always does kill Abel."

"Does he?"

"There's only one Trask boy left."

"But that doesn't mean that Cal killed Aron, not really."

"He killed a part of his brother."

"The part that was not real. The part that Aron had fabricated for himself."

"Who's to say it wasn't real? Just because a person can't hold something in their hands, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, that it isn't truth."

"But truth is. There are facts and there are lies."

"But as long as we believe something, it exists. People once knew the world was flat and for them it was. Adults know everything and are infallible to the eyes of children. The world is cut and dry, but as we grow our understanding of the world changes and thus the world itself changes. A little village in Ireland, a camp full of railroad workers, these were our entire worlds until we grew old enough to know that the world had other aspects and that other people had different experiences in it."

"But does having an understanding of something ultimately change its truthfulness?"

"For the person who believes it. What you believe makes your world. You may believe that putting shoes on the table is anathema and so go into a panic when someone puts a pair there. That panic might bring something bad upon you. You might walk into a pole or step out into the path of a cart. Or you might simply stub your toe. But because you believe in the power of the shoes, you think that the shoes caused your stubbed toe. You believe it and so it is true. It only ceases to be true when you cease to believe it."

"So when Aron ceased to believe in the purity of the mother he conjured for himself, when the world made him confront his real mother, that conjured mother died and the real mother asserted herself."

"But the conjured mother was the real mother for Aron. Who Aron was psychologically, as Freud might say, depended upon the specter of the mother he always believed in. His relationship with Abra, his embrace of faith, his general goodness, all existed because he believed he had a good mother who died and was buried back East."

"If we are what we believe, if the world is what we believe it to be, then there must be multiple universes that exist simultaneously."

"Millions of worlds. That's not to say that your universe isn't similar to mine, or even practically identical. Similar experiences and similar reading material can certainly create similar perspectives."

"Well certainly our experiences will be similar. One of us is only a figment of the other's imagination."

"If you believe that I am here, then I'm here. Maybe I'll disbelieve your existence."

"You are fictional. Your disbelief of me will not affect my world."

"That's just my point. Our understanding of the universe cannot change someone else's. It is our own ideas and our own realizations that make the world. So Cal believes he killed Aron and Aron may have believed that Cal sent him to his death. Adam, who like every father was a god to his children, believed it. Because they believed it, it is true."

"But do you believe it?"

"Do you? If we believe it, then we make it happen. Cal conformed to the reality that we set out for him at birth. He became a farmer because we expected him to become a farmer."

"But Aron did not become a shepherd."

"He did. He was a shepherd of men. Again, living he life that was proscribed to him from birth."

"But the boys had the choice. They had the choice to do what they did and what they did not."

"They did. And they chose the choices that reality would allow them to chose."

"You don't believe that."

"No, I don't suppose I do. But neither do you. You're simply afraid that it was something you did, something you taught them, that made the boys end up this way. You need to know that you loved them and raised them as best you could. The choices they made are their own. As are the choices you made yours. Cal always believed himself capable of doing harm and so he did harm. Now that he believes himself capable of overcoming darkness, he will overcome it. Belief is what matters. Believing and knowing go hand and hand."

This was the story Abra told. Mostly her children did not understand it, but they took from it that their mother wanted them to know something about belief. She would end the story the same way every time. She would sit them in a row and kiss each one and tell them, "I love you all. I believe all of you will do something great. I know I will be proud of you all forever."


End file.
